As understood in the prior art, a digital electronic still camera is a device which uses an electronic sensor to capture an image; signal processing to represent the captured signal numerically; and some storage device to preserve the numerical image data. It is further known for a digital electronic still camera to use a removable storage device, such as an integrated circuit memory card, to store images. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 5,016,107 describes an electronic still camera utilizing image compression and providing digital storage in a removable memory card having a static random access memory. In this camera, the integrated circuits in the removable memory card store image data and a directory locating the data.
Coordination between a digital camera and a computer is generally known in the prior art. FIG. 1 shows a known electronic still photography system useful for inputting images to a computer. The system includes an electronic camera 1 with an electronic sensing section 1a, a digital processing section 1b, a memory card slot 2, and a removable memory card 3; and a host computer 4 with a built-in memory card reader 5, a printer 6a, a display 6b, a keyboard data entry device 7 and a disk drive 8. Images are captured by the sensing section 1a in the camera 1, manipulated in the processing section 1b, stored on the memory card 3, and transferred from the card 3 to the host computer 4. The software used to control the sensing and processing sections 1a and 1b in the camera is located in firmware memory 1c in the camera 1. The application software used to control the playback operations of the host computer is supplied, at least in part, by the camera manufacturer. For instance, the manufacturer may provide a special disk or memory card that comes with the camera. The application software is transferred to the computer hard drive 8, and then downloaded to a computer random access memory (RAM) memory 9a, where the program is used by a central processing unit (CPU) 9b.
Digital cameras, such as the Kodak Digital Science DC40.TM. camera sold by Eastman Kodak Company, allow almost a hundred images to be stored. Because the images are stored as sequentially numbered images, it can be difficult and time consuming to locate a group of images of interest from all of the images stored in the camera. In a typical usage, an insurance adjuster may take a number of photos in processing a number of different claims during one day's operations. It would be desirable to be able to identify the images of each group, for example by claim number or client name. It may be further desirable to allow this information, along with the date and time or a company logo, to be optionally included with the image data. This ensures that any prints made from the camera can be easily identified. Such processing of the captured images is today performed in a host computer, such as the host computer 4 in FIG. 1.
The Kodak Professional Digital Camera System (model DCS-100) included a digital camera tethered by cable to a separate digital storage unit (DSU). The DSU, similar to the computer 4 of FIG. 1, contained a hard drive for storing images, a small image display, and a keypad for manipulating the images. For images that had already been captured by the camera, the system included a "tag" feature that allowed a user to flag selected images for later display or for uploading from the DSU to another computer. Suppose that a user wanted to tag a couple of already-captured images for later viewing or uploading. The first of the images would be brought up on the display and a "tag" button on the keypad would be pressed, and so on with the other images that are to be tagged. Then if the user presses a "find tags" key on the keypad, the first of the tagged images is displayed (and/or uploaded). With a second press of the "find tags" key, the second tagged image is displayed (and/or uploaded), and so on.
Another embodiment of this camera, the Kodak Hawkeye II camera, also allowed the user to type in a name for any one image after the image was taken, and to add a "note" text-string to the image file. Both cameras allowed a simple division of already-captured images into "tagged" and "not-tagged" images and required a pattern of keystrokes subsequent to capture for every image of interest. In particular, the tagging feature functioned more as a post-capture data gatekeeper than as a useful tool for image handling. Anything more complex in the way of data organization requires, as shown in FIG. 1, the use of a special application program in the host computer 4 to organize and sort the image data. Consequently, it would be desirable to have an electronic still system that could handle image content more efficiently in the field than is presently the case.